MyShake: A smartphone seismic network for earthquake early warning and beyond

Area of Science:

• Earthquake seismology
• Mobile sensing technology
• Geophysics

Background:

• Large magnitude earthquakes in urban areas cause significant casualties and economic damage.
• Existing earthquake early warning (EEW) systems rely on traditional seismic networks, which are sparsely distributed globally.
• Smartphones, with their ubiquitous nature and built-in accelerometers, offer a potential alternative for seismic data collection.

Purpose of the Study:

• To develop and demonstrate a novel seismic system, MyShake, utilizing personal smartphone sensors for earthquake detection and analysis.
• To assess the capability of smartphones in detecting earthquakes and distinguishing them from non-seismic vibrations.
• To establish a proof-of-concept for a smartphone-based EEW system.

Main Methods:

• Development of the MyShake application to collect seismic data from smartphone accelerometers.
• Implementation of an on-phone detection algorithm to filter out non-earthquake signals.
• Establishment of a central data collection site for network detection, location, and magnitude estimation in real time.

Main Results:

• Smartphones successfully recorded seismic data for magnitude 5 earthquakes at distances up to 10 km.
• An on-phone detection capability was developed to differentiate earthquake signals from everyday shakes.
• The proof-of-concept system demonstrated real-time earthquake detection, location, and magnitude estimation for issuing alerts.

Conclusions:

• MyShake offers a viable method to enhance existing EEW systems and provide EEW capabilities in regions lacking traditional networks.
• The collected seismic waveform data can be further utilized for rapid microseism mapping, building impact studies, and imaging shallow earth structure.
• Harnessing smartphone sensors presents a scalable and cost-effective approach to global earthquake monitoring and early warning.